Sunday, December 09, 2007

Holy fucking circle jerk, Batman!

If only they could have involved Dr. Roy and a diseased goat, the cycle of wankitude would have been complete.BY THE WAY, it's worth pointing out what kind of dicks the Muslim complainants are being in this brouhaha:

Maclean's has responded to an allegation by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) that, during a meeting between several law students representing the CIC, and magazine staff to discuss concerns over an article entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam," Editor-in-Chief Kenneth Whyte "indicated that Maclean's would rather go bankrupt than allow a response to the article." The allegation was made in a Dec. 4 CIC press release and repeated in a press conference on the same day.

On Dec. 5, Whyte issued the following statement to clarify what happened at the meeting: "The student lawyers in question came to us five months after the story ran. They asked for an opportunity to respond. We said that we had already run many responses to the article in our letters section, but that we would consider a reasonable request. They wanted a five-page article, written by an author of their choice, to run without any editing by us, except for spelling and grammar. They also wanted to place their response on the cover and to art direct it themselves.

"We told them we didn't consider that a reasonable request for response. When they insisted, I told them I would rather go bankrupt than let somebody from outside of our operations dictate the content of the magazine. I still feel that way."

Whyte is entirely correct and the complainants can, as Kathy Griffin would say, just suck it.

8 comments:

That JR guy isn’t one of the brighter lights in the BT firmament, but then who is?

By the way, you might want to provide a link to the complaint so that people can read it for themselves. The PDF is over at the Canadian Muslim Congress website. It’s a very long and detailed account of what they feel has been systemic “Islamophobia” and “hate-mongering” on the part of Macleans and a number of its contributors in the past. I disagree with the filing on principle, but the complaint isn’t wholly unsubstantiated and should be considered on its merits rather than summarily dismissed as baseless.

Yeah, Fergus I know it’s a difficult concept to embrace, but it is actually possible to consider something in way that isn’t completely binary. I said that their complaint deserves to be aired and considered on its merits, but I don't feel this is necessarily the right place for it and I'm opposed to using this mechanism as a vehicle for that. But you know... when you consider some of the stuff that's out there, the hate-mongering indictment might not be out of place.

I might add that I, along with a number of other Liberal bloggers stood up for the free speech rights of that hateful piece of shite at Free Dominion a while back when the Blogging Turds sat on their hands and... as usual... DID NOTHING.

Fergus — There are a lot more creative ways they could have approached the problem. For example, setting up a website dedicated to tackling the issue and then traipsing around various media outlets to flog it and “raise awareness” about the issue. Essentially, putting Macleans on the hot seat by inviting other (competing) media outlets to scrutinize their coverage and question whether or not it constituted “hate-mongering” and so on.

I’m not comfortable with legal restrictions on so-called “hate speech” at the best of times and this seems like a flagrant abuse of the process. That said, their criticisms of the coverage aren’t unfounded.

I guess what I’m saying is, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater with respect to their actual grievance that's all.

I read the CIC's documentation (pdf file) on the complaint yesterday. Lordy, it's mostly all Steyn, Barbara Amiel and Linda Frum. Anyone who subjects themselves to a concentration of the ridiculous nonsense those three twits churn out would find themselves lining up to lodge CHR complaints.

It really is our fate as Canadians to put up endlessly with the self-hating Canadians who are not cunning enough to make it in the US.